I'd watch any more bad reviews... you're likely to wake up with the monitor of your favorite machine in the bed next to you... cat-5 everywhere...
Oh the humanity!!
Re:Testament to Open Source Software Developers
on
OpenOffice Bloated?
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· Score: 1
One might say they beat Microsoft at their own game!
"Give them pictorial instructions about what exact server address, etc., to enter, and where to enter them."
I did just this in high school. Ok, not "just" this, it wasn't outlook to thunderbird, but it was documenting to teachers stp by step how to do X (I say X, because I did a few different ones, basically what ever they needed). It is *much* better recieved than "Uh, yea, outlook sucks, go get thunderbird."
I totally agree about making sacrifices to get rid of Microsoft. just the other night I did a cat and two goats, but the crazy voices in my head keep telling me to upgrade...
Didja hear that? I think Hell finally froze over!
Seriosuly though, I'm amazed. I, for once, completely agree with what this guy's saying. If he's telling the truth, shutting up people in company who are getting greedy about what can be plugged in, awesome. Plain and simple. I wish more companies had people willing to do that. Assuming all this is true (and I always take media with a grain of salt) I'm 100% behind microsoft on this one. Congrats guys, you made the right decision.
Now, this is *just* a guess... but I think you're going to see what appears to be a screenshot of Halo (2). I don't know what exactly you're expecting to see on a screenshot, perhaps a script and a length would be more appropriate to understand what you're getting?
On the other hand, if you do want to see a coupla hundred halo 2 screen shots... go for it
I highly reccomend only watching the ones that were nominated for awards, and even some of those are bad. I ended up just watching the winners, be advised not all are in english (a surprise to me).
I'm getting kind of anooyed with all of the "rights" posts recently. No, its not that I don't care about civil liberties, in fact I'm a very stuanch advocate of personal liberty, its how they are phrased.
FTFA:
"But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
Um, the same thing that happens if Congress just relaxes the laws, its not like University networks are secure in any way shape or form, and I'm sure law enforcement could have their way with it. Does anyone out there consider this a valid arguement? And if so, why bother posting, because maybe in the future the governement will grab slashdot's servers and take your IP for posting against them? The point is you can argue all you want that "x sets up y, which sets up z, and then we're all screwed," or you realize that in the end, we can all be screed anyways and tell me how my rights are being violated right now.
And lets look at the article. Are Universities opposed to this because of the massive threat it is to our liberty? No, they're opposed because of the cost. Now, either Universities are exceptionally greedy, so much so that one of the biggest concentrations of rights activists (college campuses) care more about the money then how we'll be screwed over, or this isn't as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
As a side note, the Patriot Act allows for secret wiretaps anyways, so why care if you're in compliance when it'll happen behind your back anyways?
As for the cost, ok, $7 billion is a big number, but so what? "Studies" show that just Div-1 sports will spend over $4 billion this year, that's the athletics department's alone. Since athletics is just a part of the budget, surely an extra $3 billion could spring up from all the other non-div 1 schools? But, they'd rather keep it for their budgets and athletics.
Its claimed in the article that this would raise cost by a horrendous $450 per year... who cares? Yea, I go out of state thanks to a wonderful scholarship, but had I not gotten it, I'd be working my way through in state, as that's the only way I could afford it. And this 'huge increase' is nothing, its a drop in the bucket. Compared to the $28,000 I already pay (just for tuition) this is a trivial cost. Scholarships will easily cover this, and its not hard to find $500 scholarships.
Now, I think a better reason to be opposed to this (seeing as the F.B.I. even said they'd never had problems serving wiretaps before, and already do 'em, this just makes it so they don't have to go to campus), is the work, and the stupidity. Every communication going through ONE network center, then out? I don't know about your home/business/college, but MINE never stays up 24/7. Especially the college network, someone always does something stupid (two dhcp routers on the same internal network I heard just two days ago) and this just screams "I'm gonna break". Why doesn't law enforecement just accept going out to wherever the tap is and do it on site is my biggest question?
All in all, I'd like to see less sensationalist (yes, I realize the governement pulls it too) "we're gonna be watched like 1984" stories and more "Hmm.. here's an interesting idea, do you think it'll work" stories.
Just my 2.30979956 yen
Hmm... I'll confess I hadn't thought about using BT for this, and it would make a lot of sense. Assuming secure enough trackers, it probably could be used by major companies as a legitimate downloading source, but do you think they would embrace it, as few companies are actually using BT rather then condeming it?
I've been reading all the comments for this article, and I see a lot of people agreeing with Mr. Gates. Now, that's *not* why I shudder, though in joking I'll say it is, but the thought of getting rid of removeable media in favor to storing things locally. Allow me to present my argument.
1) Disk Space
With removeable media, you have infinite (approaching) disk space. I'm sure I'm going to get at least one comment saying "no, you're stupid", but look at it this way. If you have 1 250 wB hard drive (whateverbyte, meaning as big as you want) you can store that much content. However, if 1 removeable disk has only 50 wB, buy 4 disks and you've got more room. I've always been in favor of removeable media as its a whole lot easier to go out and buy another pack of cds then it is to go get a hard drive and put it in (and yes, I built my two desktops, and regularly upgrade others systems, so I don't mean I can't, I mean I prefer the removeable way of upgrading).
Now, what with the price of drives, some may say that you'll always be able to upgrade for cheap, and hold as much as you you need. Ok, a good movie is only 4 gig, and I've got a 250 gig hard drive, so I should be able to hold everything I want, right? I've filled him up a few times when I was doing exactly as the article suggests, ripping my DVDs and CDs to the disk so I wouldn't have to swap discs or deal with nasty DRMs. Yea, I could go buy another, but I'd end up filling it up soon enough anyways. I don't think that this is a good enough reason to say "down with disks", because not everyone can afford a new disk every year.
2) Backups
So, if all my media is on my hard drive, where do I back it up to? Using those DRMs microsoft has it won't let me burn it to my media, I imagine, I'm going to need to go get another hard drive to back it up? I'm not a business, I can't afford to have whole data stroage centers to let me and my friends maintain efficient backups. Right now I backup all my data every two weeks (I develop web pages, graphics, and c/java) and can't afford to have something go "oops" all of a sudden.
3) Get Movies
And finally, if all my media is on my drive, where do I get it from? I imagine Best Buy's gonna become a nice website where I can download these movies for a fee, and they'll get locked after x hours perhaps? But what about people that don't have internet acess (don't laugh, you were there too once). Or people that can't afford to download 4 GB everytime they wanna watch a new movie? What about those people that just don't want to share an internet line with 8 other apartments doing the above? I just don't see it as being efficient enough to be a valid model.
Take Steam for instance (Valve software's software distribution model). The day Half-life 2 came out many couldn't play for hours after buying the game because the servers were swampped. Can you imagine what would happen if you had most of America (or even just, say, coupla million/.ers checking out the new Star Wars, heh) it would grind to a halt like every site. I would hate to go rent a movie to watch it, then wait while Best buy rebooted their./ed servers and got it to me.
So, while I am extremely opposed to getting away from removeable media and those "nasty DRMs", I would hate to see the alternative come. Unfortunatly, I don't have much faith in the technological choices of the masses ("You mean I can buy this, then download and I don't need a disk?! Cool!" will echo from colleges nationwide) and I can easily see Mr. Gates being right. All he has to do is put the infrastructure there, and enough people will sign on that it'll become a reality.
I don't see this as a "last time". There will always be screwups like this as long as people hire based on degree and not ability.
As a student in high school I was in a class that amounted to tech help. There was about 20 kids in this class through all the periods, and we had one 'boss'. This guy was admin for a school of 850 computers (one guy for all that) and had left a career (retired) for this job. It was abismal, as he had to listen to his boss, who's position was at the county level, and was an idiot. The guy was 5 years out of college with a nice degree but knew nothing about securing or maintaining systems. However, he got to set our policies. Our school ended up with OC-3 internet, in order to faciliate streaming video from class rooms (which wasn't allowed) and was filtered on a county level (had to go through a T1 line to get to the filter). So they paid for OC-3 and by default limited it to T1 speeds. Luckily my boss quit and went back to Apple after two years (the length of his contract) but the county admin is the same guy.
Why'd I tell that stupidly long story? To illustrate that this is not something to be surprised about. I'm sure everyone has stories of insecure school systems, and I think it boils down to the hiring practice of wherever it is. I know that my county had a degree requirement for that position, but it did no good as there was no "aptitude" requirement. I'm sure that is the same here, someone just figured "no one would *ever* try that password" due to lack of real-world experience.
I recently patented the use of two numbers, 1 and 0, and the use of them in representing a set of data or instructions. Along those lines I also copyrighted two digital songs, one consisting of the bit 1, and the other consisting of the bit 0. Since every peice of digital music repeats my songs more then 4 times (a whooooole lot more) every song is is copyright violation and owes me big.
*shakes head*
Will we NEVER see the end of these riduculous claims of copyright/patent/whatever-you-want-money-for infringement?! These are getting just plain absurd, as many of the comments above have pointed out, XML is based way earlier then '97, and its pointless for them to try and pursue this. I'm getting disgusted by the patent/copyright system in this country (from an American) and the greedyness people have in pursuing their (perceived) "rights". You can't wait 8 years, then all of a sudden realize something that many people are using is, in fact, your property, and you deserve money for it, that's plain absurd. Why didn't this come years ago, or were they living under a rock and not following tech developments?
FTFA:
"We're not interested in having us against the world. We're just looking for ways to leverage an asset; we have pretty concrete proof that makes us feel comfortable saying it is an asset,"
The first statement is quite pointless, because anything they try to pursue would be them "against the world" because of how many people use XML. Then 'leverage an asset' makes it sound like their patent is some way to get the company a ton of money (granted, a good reason to patent something) which *would* pit them against whoever is using "their product" due to infringement.
*shakes head again*
These stories of greed astound me, and for those who will aruge "well, if its true, they have a right to it", I'd say to read the dates on the patents (the newest is 2002) and wonder why they didn't pursue settlement back then? Greed is the only possible reason, plain and simple. Sure, they *might* have a case, is XML was started a few months later and not based on something decades older, but the fact is they don't.
What software has ever not needed patches? I think its good web development, if you know something's coming, this informs the viewers that they can expect it and won't have to dig when they need it.
I know what my roommate's gonna be hearing all tonight
"Quad Damage!"
Seriously, thanks id for this onderful (I hope, haven't tested yet) release, and as many others have said I hope others companies might see the response to this and do the same. And you might want to send id an email, or post on a forum thanking them because, hey, who doesn't like praise for good work?
In response to a question on the role of open source software in Africa, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that cost is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only $160 (£91).
Cost of XP?
only about $189.99 Now, with a total YEARLY net profit, without expenses of food, etc, this would mean that they could afford less then one copy of XP home. Let alone the computer to run it. I've read some good articles about the efforts going on to get both Africa, and some parts of Australia connected using buses equppied with internet. These can run Linux (software, assuming you pick the right distro, is free), so you only have to pay for the hardware. Now, if a group of people, say... a small sized town... got together, they might be able to convince the people doing these bus routes to stop on by.
I, for one, think that this is just up there with all of Microsoft's claims of fooey and blooey, FaB(tm), and wish they'd, perhaps, donate software to help some people out?
Oh, and for all those people saying "they need food first" not *everyone* in Africa is starving, and computers would be valuable learning tools as well as would greatly help the economy (think academy courses where you can come out of high school with a programming certificate).
Thank you for saying that, its exactly what I've beent rying to explain to my friends here. I firmly agree that this whole argument is pointless, and would love to see real news here instead of this.
It may not seem like pop culture to you, but I know a ton of non-CS major, not-too computer literate people that read slashdot simply because of the ability to comment. Not a whole lot of news (CNN, etc) hav that feature, and they like getting a broad idea of the ideas out there. To name a few:
Me, CS/Arabic Major
My Brother, Audio Engineer
My Pastor, A Pastor
Elders at my church, Biology Professor, and a construction guy
About 10 close friends of assorted degrees and jobs...
Basically, I disagree that slashdot is not pop culture. It may not be on Channel 4 everynight, but I find enough references to it online, and what idiot 13 year old doesn't go online nowadays) that I can easily see it being well known in many circles.
Slashdot Mirror
And here I thought it was to be bigger then everyone at everything. Such small ambitions Bill, what's up?
I'd watch any more bad reviews... you're likely to wake up with the monitor of your favorite machine in the bed next to you... cat-5 everywhere... Oh the humanity!!
One might say they beat Microsoft at their own game!
"Give them pictorial instructions about what exact server address, etc., to enter, and where to enter them." I did just this in high school. Ok, not "just" this, it wasn't outlook to thunderbird, but it was documenting to teachers stp by step how to do X (I say X, because I did a few different ones, basically what ever they needed). It is *much* better recieved than "Uh, yea, outlook sucks, go get thunderbird." I totally agree about making sacrifices to get rid of Microsoft. just the other night I did a cat and two goats, but the crazy voices in my head keep telling me to upgrade...
Only time I've ever needed anything this massive is for my porn collection which is only in the terabytes, not petabytes, sorry.
Didja hear that? I think Hell finally froze over! Seriosuly though, I'm amazed. I, for once, completely agree with what this guy's saying. If he's telling the truth, shutting up people in company who are getting greedy about what can be plugged in, awesome. Plain and simple. I wish more companies had people willing to do that. Assuming all this is true (and I always take media with a grain of salt) I'm 100% behind microsoft on this one. Congrats guys, you made the right decision.
Now, this is *just* a guess... but I think you're going to see what appears to be a screenshot of Halo (2). I don't know what exactly you're expecting to see on a screenshot, perhaps a script and a length would be more appropriate to understand what you're getting? On the other hand, if you do want to see a coupla hundred halo 2 screen shots... go for it
I highly reccomend only watching the ones that were nominated for awards, and even some of those are bad. I ended up just watching the winners, be advised not all are in english (a surprise to me).
I'm getting kind of anooyed with all of the "rights" posts recently. No, its not that I don't care about civil liberties, in fact I'm a very stuanch advocate of personal liberty, its how they are phrased.
FTFA:
"But with the technology infrastructure in place, what happens if congress decides to relax court order requirements in the future 'in their fight against criminals, terrorists and spies?'"
Um, the same thing that happens if Congress just relaxes the laws, its not like University networks are secure in any way shape or form, and I'm sure law enforcement could have their way with it. Does anyone out there consider this a valid arguement? And if so, why bother posting, because maybe in the future the governement will grab slashdot's servers and take your IP for posting against them? The point is you can argue all you want that "x sets up y, which sets up z, and then we're all screwed," or you realize that in the end, we can all be screed anyways and tell me how my rights are being violated right now.
And lets look at the article. Are Universities opposed to this because of the massive threat it is to our liberty? No, they're opposed because of the cost. Now, either Universities are exceptionally greedy, so much so that one of the biggest concentrations of rights activists (college campuses) care more about the money then how we'll be screwed over, or this isn't as dangerous as you're making it out to be.
As a side note, the Patriot Act allows for secret wiretaps anyways, so why care if you're in compliance when it'll happen behind your back anyways?
As for the cost, ok, $7 billion is a big number, but so what? "Studies" show that just Div-1 sports will spend over $4 billion this year, that's the athletics department's alone. Since athletics is just a part of the budget, surely an extra $3 billion could spring up from all the other non-div 1 schools? But, they'd rather keep it for their budgets and athletics.
Its claimed in the article that this would raise cost by a horrendous $450 per year... who cares? Yea, I go out of state thanks to a wonderful scholarship, but had I not gotten it, I'd be working my way through in state, as that's the only way I could afford it. And this 'huge increase' is nothing, its a drop in the bucket. Compared to the $28,000 I already pay (just for tuition) this is a trivial cost. Scholarships will easily cover this, and its not hard to find $500 scholarships.
Now, I think a better reason to be opposed to this (seeing as the F.B.I. even said they'd never had problems serving wiretaps before, and already do 'em, this just makes it so they don't have to go to campus), is the work, and the stupidity. Every communication going through ONE network center, then out? I don't know about your home/business/college, but MINE never stays up 24/7. Especially the college network, someone always does something stupid (two dhcp routers on the same internal network I heard just two days ago) and this just screams "I'm gonna break". Why doesn't law enforecement just accept going out to wherever the tap is and do it on site is my biggest question?
All in all, I'd like to see less sensationalist (yes, I realize the governement pulls it too) "we're gonna be watched like 1984" stories and more "Hmm.. here's an interesting idea, do you think it'll work" stories. Just my 2.30979956 yen
Hmm... I'll confess I hadn't thought about using BT for this, and it would make a lot of sense. Assuming secure enough trackers, it probably could be used by major companies as a legitimate downloading source, but do you think they would embrace it, as few companies are actually using BT rather then condeming it?
I've been reading all the comments for this article, and I see a lot of people agreeing with Mr. Gates. Now, that's *not* why I shudder, though in joking I'll say it is, but the thought of getting rid of removeable media in favor to storing things locally. Allow me to present my argument.
1) Disk Space
With removeable media, you have infinite (approaching) disk space. I'm sure I'm going to get at least one comment saying "no, you're stupid", but look at it this way. If you have 1 250 wB hard drive (whateverbyte, meaning as big as you want) you can store that much content. However, if 1 removeable disk has only 50 wB, buy 4 disks and you've got more room. I've always been in favor of removeable media as its a whole lot easier to go out and buy another pack of cds then it is to go get a hard drive and put it in (and yes, I built my two desktops, and regularly upgrade others systems, so I don't mean I can't, I mean I prefer the removeable way of upgrading).
Now, what with the price of drives, some may say that you'll always be able to upgrade for cheap, and hold as much as you you need. Ok, a good movie is only 4 gig, and I've got a 250 gig hard drive, so I should be able to hold everything I want, right? I've filled him up a few times when I was doing exactly as the article suggests, ripping my DVDs and CDs to the disk so I wouldn't have to swap discs or deal with nasty DRMs. Yea, I could go buy another, but I'd end up filling it up soon enough anyways. I don't think that this is a good enough reason to say "down with disks", because not everyone can afford a new disk every year.
2) Backups
So, if all my media is on my hard drive, where do I back it up to? Using those DRMs microsoft has it won't let me burn it to my media, I imagine, I'm going to need to go get another hard drive to back it up? I'm not a business, I can't afford to have whole data stroage centers to let me and my friends maintain efficient backups. Right now I backup all my data every two weeks (I develop web pages, graphics, and c/java) and can't afford to have something go "oops" all of a sudden.
3) Get Movies
And finally, if all my media is on my drive, where do I get it from? I imagine Best Buy's gonna become a nice website where I can download these movies for a fee, and they'll get locked after x hours perhaps? But what about people that don't have internet acess (don't laugh, you were there too once). Or people that can't afford to download 4 GB everytime they wanna watch a new movie? What about those people that just don't want to share an internet line with 8 other apartments doing the above? I just don't see it as being efficient enough to be a valid model.
Take Steam for instance (Valve software's software distribution model). The day Half-life 2 came out many couldn't play for hours after buying the game because the servers were swampped. Can you imagine what would happen if you had most of America (or even just, say, coupla million /.ers checking out the new Star Wars, heh) it would grind to a halt like every site. I would hate to go rent a movie to watch it, then wait while Best buy rebooted their ./ed servers and got it to me.
So, while I am extremely opposed to getting away from removeable media and those "nasty DRMs", I would hate to see the alternative come. Unfortunatly, I don't have much faith in the technological choices of the masses ("You mean I can buy this, then download and I don't need a disk?! Cool!" will echo from colleges nationwide) and I can easily see Mr. Gates being right. All he has to do is put the infrastructure there, and enough people will sign on that it'll become a reality.
A 78,892,314.9 second old baby?
I won't lie, I cried a little at the end to Doom 3.... granted it was because I wasted who knows how many hours playing it with no flash light....
I don't see this as a "last time". There will always be screwups like this as long as people hire based on degree and not ability. As a student in high school I was in a class that amounted to tech help. There was about 20 kids in this class through all the periods, and we had one 'boss'. This guy was admin for a school of 850 computers (one guy for all that) and had left a career (retired) for this job. It was abismal, as he had to listen to his boss, who's position was at the county level, and was an idiot. The guy was 5 years out of college with a nice degree but knew nothing about securing or maintaining systems. However, he got to set our policies. Our school ended up with OC-3 internet, in order to faciliate streaming video from class rooms (which wasn't allowed) and was filtered on a county level (had to go through a T1 line to get to the filter). So they paid for OC-3 and by default limited it to T1 speeds. Luckily my boss quit and went back to Apple after two years (the length of his contract) but the county admin is the same guy. Why'd I tell that stupidly long story? To illustrate that this is not something to be surprised about. I'm sure everyone has stories of insecure school systems, and I think it boils down to the hiring practice of wherever it is. I know that my county had a degree requirement for that position, but it did no good as there was no "aptitude" requirement. I'm sure that is the same here, someone just figured "no one would *ever* try that password" due to lack of real-world experience.
I was born in 1986 and I can remember this (ahh.... my collection of crappy hacker movies)
I recently patented the use of two numbers, 1 and 0, and the use of them in representing a set of data or instructions. Along those lines I also copyrighted two digital songs, one consisting of the bit 1, and the other consisting of the bit 0. Since every peice of digital music repeats my songs more then 4 times (a whooooole lot more) every song is is copyright violation and owes me big. *shakes head* Will we NEVER see the end of these riduculous claims of copyright/patent/whatever-you-want-money-for infringement?! These are getting just plain absurd, as many of the comments above have pointed out, XML is based way earlier then '97, and its pointless for them to try and pursue this. I'm getting disgusted by the patent/copyright system in this country (from an American) and the greedyness people have in pursuing their (perceived) "rights". You can't wait 8 years, then all of a sudden realize something that many people are using is, in fact, your property, and you deserve money for it, that's plain absurd. Why didn't this come years ago, or were they living under a rock and not following tech developments? FTFA: "We're not interested in having us against the world. We're just looking for ways to leverage an asset; we have pretty concrete proof that makes us feel comfortable saying it is an asset," The first statement is quite pointless, because anything they try to pursue would be them "against the world" because of how many people use XML. Then 'leverage an asset' makes it sound like their patent is some way to get the company a ton of money (granted, a good reason to patent something) which *would* pit them against whoever is using "their product" due to infringement. *shakes head again* These stories of greed astound me, and for those who will aruge "well, if its true, they have a right to it", I'd say to read the dates on the patents (the newest is 2002) and wonder why they didn't pursue settlement back then? Greed is the only possible reason, plain and simple. Sure, they *might* have a case, is XML was started a few months later and not based on something decades older, but the fact is they don't.
What software has ever not needed patches? I think its good web development, if you know something's coming, this informs the viewers that they can expect it and won't have to dig when they need it.
I know what my roommate's gonna be hearing all tonight "Quad Damage!" Seriously, thanks id for this onderful (I hope, haven't tested yet) release, and as many others have said I hope others companies might see the response to this and do the same. And you might want to send id an email, or post on a forum thanking them because, hey, who doesn't like praise for good work?
In response to a question on the role of open source software in Africa, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that cost is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only $160 (£91). Cost of XP? only about $189.99 Now, with a total YEARLY net profit, without expenses of food, etc, this would mean that they could afford less then one copy of XP home. Let alone the computer to run it. I've read some good articles about the efforts going on to get both Africa, and some parts of Australia connected using buses equppied with internet. These can run Linux (software, assuming you pick the right distro, is free), so you only have to pay for the hardware. Now, if a group of people, say... a small sized town... got together, they might be able to convince the people doing these bus routes to stop on by. I, for one, think that this is just up there with all of Microsoft's claims of fooey and blooey, FaB(tm), and wish they'd, perhaps, donate software to help some people out? Oh, and for all those people saying "they need food first" not *everyone* in Africa is starving, and computers would be valuable learning tools as well as would greatly help the economy (think academy courses where you can come out of high school with a programming certificate).
What?! Then who killed Kennedy?!
Of *course* they won't sell it for $400!! That'd be stupid! They'll sell it for $399 and not a penny more, what a deal!
Thank you for saying that, its exactly what I've beent rying to explain to my friends here. I firmly agree that this whole argument is pointless, and would love to see real news here instead of this.
You mean... *gasp* Weapons of Mass Destruction?! *points the finger*
It may not seem like pop culture to you, but I know a ton of non-CS major, not-too computer literate people that read slashdot simply because of the ability to comment. Not a whole lot of news (CNN, etc) hav that feature, and they like getting a broad idea of the ideas out there. To name a few: Me, CS/Arabic Major My Brother, Audio Engineer My Pastor, A Pastor Elders at my church, Biology Professor, and a construction guy About 10 close friends of assorted degrees and jobs... Basically, I disagree that slashdot is not pop culture. It may not be on Channel 4 everynight, but I find enough references to it online, and what idiot 13 year old doesn't go online nowadays) that I can easily see it being well known in many circles.
What's the difference between an oboe and a Scud missle? Nobody dies when a Scud goes out of tune